Curator, Starr Figura: My name is Starr Figura. I'm a curator of Drawings and Prints here at The Museum of Modern Art.
Félix Fénéon was an art critic, a writer, an editor, a journalist, and a collector. And although very few people have heard of him today, he played an extremely important role in the development of modern art. We would probably not know, or at least not understand, the artists that you'll see in this exhibition the way we do if it hadn't been for Fénéon.
Fénéon lived during a period of intense social and political turmoil in France. He was a very committed, radical anarchist. For him, avant-garde art. For him, avant-garde art and radical politics were two sides of the same coin. They were both vehicles to achieve a more fair and just society - to create a world of greater freedom, not just for artists, but for everyone.